Students’ physical education experiences in a multi-ethnic class

Abstract

ABSTRACTAs western countries have become increasingly diverse, education is often emphasized as one of the most important arenas for social integration. However, research within physical education over the past decades has highlighted how students with non-western backgrounds experience processes of ‘othering’, exclusion, and marginalization in the subject. In the Norwegian context, we have little knowledge about how these processes work within multi-ethnic PE lessons. In addition, scholars have pointed to the tendency of PE research on race/racism and ethnicity to focus on the minoritized ‘other’, while leaving out the complexity of the multi-ethnic encounter. By applying an intersectional lens, our aim is to investigate students’ experiences in a multi-ethnic co-educational PE context. Specifically, we ask how the students’ multiple identities may influence their experiences within PE, and what processes of inclusion and exclusion are revealed through their narratives. The study is based on ethnographic fieldwork in two PE classes, in an urban secondary school in Norway. Data for this article is drawn from one of the classes and consists of written field notes from observation of 26 PE lessons and semi-structured interviews with 11 students. Selection criteria for the interviews were based on gender, ethnic background, visible skills, and attitudes expressed towards the subject, as well as students belonging to different social groupings within the class. Data were analyzed using thematic narrative analysis. In the article, three students’ narratives are discussed. The findings indicate that, while the multi-ethnic learning context is experienced as an arena in which to develop social relations across cultural differences, the students’ stories also reveal how ethnic and cultural differences cause tensions in relation to students’ interaction during activities and in the changing room. In these tensions, power relations embedded across students’ ethnic, gender, and class identities become manifest.